Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age by James L. Nolan Jr

Abstract

Reviewed by: Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age by James L. Nolan Jr Abena Dove Osseo-Asare (bio) Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age By James L. Nolan Jr. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020. Pp. 294. In this gripping book, James L. Nolan Jr. narrates the involvement of his grandfather James F. Nolan (hereafter Nolan) in the creation of the first nuclear bombs, while working as a physician at Los Alamos in the 1940s. The author, who is a highly regarded sociologist of technology, creates academic and personal distance from his subject in order to develop a critical analysis of Nolan's participation in early radiation research designed to cover up the risks of nuclear bombs (pp. 139, 184). The result is a compelling commentary on not only the ethics of atomic warfare but also the technological experiments of our own age, including artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. The author, who inherited his grandfather's mementos, letters, and photographs after his father's passing, peppers descriptions of the establishment of the Los Alamos laboratories community with childhood memories gleaned from his family. His father played with building sets with the sons of nuclear physicists. His grandmother remembered how phone calls and trips to the grocery store might be intercepted by secret service officers concerned that anyone could leak nuclear secrets. Above all, the author details the pleasures of the frequent parties of the nuclear settlers and his grandfather's [End Page 620] extraordinary ability to deliver hundreds of babies as people coupled and procreated. After honing his skills as an obstetrician delivering babies, Grandpa Nolan was to deliver "Little Boy," the uranium required to complete the bomb to be dropped over Hiroshima. Nolan rode the USS Indianapolis from San Francisco to Tinian Island, escorting the stash of uranium. Nolan was not able to disclose the contents of his cargo and had trouble passing as an artillery officer, wearing his mock military insignia upside down and at a loss for basic terminology surrounding armaments. Nolan retreated to Catholic masses on board the ship, officiated by his new friend Thomas Conay, who was among the 870 men who perished after a Japanese submarine torpedoed the ship shortly after Nolan and the uranium came off-board. The book does not detail exactly what happened on the days of the bombings in Japan from the perspective of either those in the planes or those on the ground. The author's grandfather was witness to neither. Rather, the book describes Nolan's days whiling away time on Tinian Island, waiting for news of the "success" of the Trinity Test and subsequent Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks. An entire chapter covers the Trinity Test and the radiation poisoning and deaths that followed a group of girl scouts who were camping nearby and unknowingly played in the ashy "snow" that fell from the sky and wafted their way. Nolan's journey did lead him to conduct medical examinations in the wake of the attacks on Japan. U.S. medical teams faced pressure from military officials to suppress early reports by an Australian journalist of the "atomic plague" that followed the bombings. They measured radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their observations of patients led to official reports stating that radiation dissipated to tolerable levels and any injuries were from burns in the actual bombing. Nolan then further papered over the effects of radiation on people as a researcher in the Marshall Islands after subsequent bomb tests there. Nolan did make small remarks about the real risks, but the military covered them up, even in congressional hearings. In his later years, Nolan arguably retooled his expertise on radiation and bombs for good, serving as a gynecological oncologist in Los Angeles and developing new techniques to target cancer cells. He also grappled with possible effects of radiation exposure himself, including presumably infertility. A major tension in the book is the extent to which Nolan was a whistleblower on atomic radiation and his perspective on the necessity of nuclear warfare. The author highlights his grandfather's liminal place as an observer of the Los Alamos scene...